We are campaigning to make GP surgeries more accessible

M

Margot

Administrator
We are contacting GP surgeries across the UK to advocate to make tbheir practice more accessible.

A reserach by a team of autistic doctors revealed that a lot of autistic people do not contact their GPs for their medical needs and let life limiting conditions to deteriorate. No surprise that autistic people have 16 to 30 years shorter life expectancy due to the whole range of health conditions.
The biggest barriers are the need to phone for appointments (60%) and inaccessible sesory environment.

We want to change that.

Please wright down below in the thread the address of your GP surgery and we will send them a letter with resources and a self scoring questionnaire.

You could also approach your surgery yourself by first conducting the audith using this resource attached

You can get in touch with us in this thread about your audit and surgery.

Please speak up and let your voice heard :)


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Margot said:
We are contacting GP surgeries across the UK to advocate to make tbheir practice more accessible.

A reserach by a team of autistic doctors revealed that a lot of autistic people do not contact their GPs for their medical needs and let life limiting conditions to deteriorate. No surprise that autistic people have 16 to 30 years shorter life expectancy due to the whole range of health conditions.
The biggest barriers are the need to phone for appointments (60%) and inaccessible sesory environment.

We want to change that.

Please wright down below in the thread the address of your GP surgery and we will send them a letter with resources and a self scoring questionnaire.

You could also approach your surgery yourself by first conducting the audith using this resource attached

You can get in touch with us in this thread about your audit and surgery.

Please speak up and let your voice heard :)


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Hi this is brilliant. I'm planning to complete this but I'm also sending this to various neurodivergent friends and family who have had very bad experience when trying to contact their GP. Shall I ask them to complete it and send it back to my email address. Then I can upload it to this forum.
Is there a deadline for this?
 
Inspire Health has 2 sites

Avenue House Surgery
109 Saltergate
Chesterfield
S40 1LE

Hasland Medical Centre
Jepson Road
Chesterfield
S41 0NZ

Practice Manager - Amy Corwell
Operations Managers -
Lisa Pickering & Reece Gascoigne

Email: ddicb.admin@nhs.net

Good luck with them, I left the practice very recently after being ‘educated’ by one of the partners about ‘autistic tantrums’ and finding out their new ‘neurodiversity waiting area’ was just 3 chairs in an alcove in front of a large window at the back of the standard waiting room, same lighting, same acoustics, same room. Box ticked there, job well done Inspire Health (sarcasm)

The admin staff seem to have little training or real understanding of mental health issues let alone neurodiversity.

Their booking system is online, but quite complicated and I feel, inaccessible. Often the booking window closes after 10 minutes, I have never known it to be open for the full hour.

I also put in a verbal complaint regarding the use of language around autism in a social prescribing article published by their IPG on their website in 2022. It does appear this has now been removed from the website, I assume due to my complaint.

*Edit - the article is still online. Check out the language used here when discussing autism in the case studies. All problems are "due to autism" nothing to do with any environmental or social stressors.

inspirehppg.wixsite.com

Jo Gascoigne, Social Prescriber speaks to Inspire Health IPG

Jo Gascoigne joined us at our last meeting and gave a talk on her work as a Social Prescriber.This is a new resource available to Inspire Health patients and it seems obvious that it will be much needed over the coming year. Jo did emphasise that this care can much improve people’s mental health...
inspirehppg.wixsite.com inspirehppg.wixsite.com
 
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Having been recently diagnosed in 2021, I’m not at all familiar with the various uses of language debates, although I have heard similar from within the LGBT community as an older gay man, but frankly, it’s a confusing mystery to me - I suspect that this may have something to do with training bodies for professionals and coming out of the universities and when they start working with the NHS in various NHS trusts, it might have something to do with following certain “policies and procedures” (so much a part of many corporate entities these days) and ultimately, it’s a certain overarching political agenda that seems to being followed and implemented, that seems to be not only pushing out disinformation and misinformation as standard, misleading people, including the general public, but also preventing the public from being properly and correctly informed and educated about autism and related issues - the question really is why are they doing this? What are their true motivations for doing so? It does seem deeply unethical and morally bankrupt what is happening on many levels
 

Dr Mary Doherty and Dr Sebastian Shaw - Healthcare barriers for autistic adults​

Dr Mary Doherty, Founder, Autistic Doctors International and Dr Sebatian Shaw, Honorary Clinical Lecturer, BSMS, explain the barriers that autistic adults face when accessing healthcare. Their research found that 80% of autistic adults reported difficulty visiting a GP, generally considered the first port of call for medical issues. Read more about the study: https://bit.ly/3JQJDjs

 
Chevin Medical Practice
Charles Street Surgery
Otley
LS21 1BJ

Thank you, this is so needed! I have a large medical record due to accidents, injuries and mental ill health, but there are many concerns that I've never followed up.
 
Munro Medical Centre
West Elloe Avenue
Spalding
Lincs
PE11 2BY

Thank you to the NDSA team for trying to make this positive change.
 
Crown Wood Medical Centre
4A Off Crown Row,
Opladen Way,
Bracknell
RG12 0TH

They are an utter nightmare and refuse to respond to my emails. Consequently I need to have my social worker communicate with them on my behalf (which they also refuse to do consistently). Staff are always hostile.
 
mentormember said:

Dr Mary Doherty and Dr Sebastian Shaw - Healthcare barriers for autistic adults​

Dr Mary Doherty, Founder, Autistic Doctors International and Dr Sebatian Shaw, Honorary Clinical Lecturer, BSMS, explain the barriers that autistic adults face when accessing healthcare. Their research found that 80% of autistic adults reported difficulty visiting a GP, generally considered the first port of call for medical issues. Read more about the study: https://bit.ly/3JQJDjs

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I think that we have to ask the bigger questions here, for example, why are the medical schools not training GP’s and local health centres about mental health and hidden disability issues, even on regular refresher training courses and why is this not standard practice within many NHS trusts? Is it not now the time for mental health and hidden disability like autism to have its own separate body away from the NHS as a “one-stop-shop” - the mismanagement and wastage within the NHS has been well documented and such a new body could lead the way in innovation in the care of people with mental health and hidden disability - existing NHS staff have privately shared their own frustrations with me about not being able to provide the higher standard of care to myself and others that they want to provide but are actively prevented from doing so
 
Peonies said:
I've just been listening to a discussion with Dr Luke Beardon and he was saying why is autism even in the DSM5 it's not medical condition, it's not a disorder and he feels we need professionals who are trained in autism and we should stop diagnosing , because we don't diagnosis PNT

During the discussion he was also talking about how

Autism+environment=outcome and he gave examples around Dr surgeries and how they can change the environment, how they communicate with us so the outcome around us engaging with them changes and reduces anxiety

He said the main purpose to have a diagnosis is for something that needs fixing
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I’ve even read discussions and articles online suggesting that all mental health and hidden disabilities like autism are “fake” and this also appears to be the reason for the lack of and refusal to engage with efforts around public education, understanding, awareness, and support for autistic people and crucially, lack of funding is constantly citied as a reason for lack of support, in fact it was even used as a legal defence in court for failure to provide adequate support
 
Peonies said:
Oh that makes me so frustrated, every time I see something like that I scream

Luke was saying in the video I watched he hates people saying discorded and high functioning, he said we don't ask PNT people if they are high functioning
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It’s the point blank refusal to understand and to really take the time to listen to us and our experiences is something that I find not just frustrating but also deeply hypocritical and immoral